June’s average global temperature was 16.2C, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says. ‘We are living in steroid era of climate system.'

Pakistani youths cool off in a swimming pool in Lahore in June. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Monday that June set another heat record.

By:Seth BorensteinAssociated Press, Published on Mon Jul 21 2014

WASHINGTON—The globe is on a hot streak, setting a heat record in June. That’s after the world broke a record in May.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Monday that last month’s average global temperature was 61.2 degrees (16.2 Celsius), which is 1.3 degrees higher than the 20th-century average. It beat 2010’s old record by one-twentieth of a degree.

While one-twentieth of a degree doesn’t sound like much, in temperature records it’s like winning a horse race by several lengths, said NOAA climate monitoring chief Derek Arndt.

Arndt said both the June and May records were driven by unusually hot oceans, especially the Pacific and Indian oceans.

Heat records in June broke on every continent but Antarctica.

All 12 of the world’s monthly heat records have been set after 1997, more than half in the last decade. All the global cold monthly records were set before 1917. Global temperature records go back to 1880.

And with a likely El Niño this year — the warming of the tropical Pacific, which influences the world’s weather and increases global temperatures — it is starting to look like another extra warm year, said University of Arizona climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck.

“This is what global warming looks like,” Overpeck said in an email. “Not record hot everywhere all the time, but certainly a reflection that the odds of record hot are going up everywhere around the planet.”